


Justice, Be Not Blind

by Butterfly



Category: Dexter (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-21
Updated: 2008-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-02 16:12:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Butterfly/pseuds/Butterfly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's the law and there's what right. Miguel Prado is sure that he knows the difference. Spoilers through Dexter 3x06 -- "Sí Se Puede".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Justice, Be Not Blind

Miguel isn't certain anymore if the answer is the egg or the chicken.

Is it the danger in Dexter what drew him to the man in the first place or is it the fact that it is _Dexter_ who is dangerous make it attractive? He doesn't know.

He believes that his intentions were pure, in the beginning. Dexter was looking into Oscar and any good brother would have rushed to defend the name of his family. He had to speak to Dexter, had to know that the man was not going use Oscar's past against him.

He thinks that this is what happened.

He can't quite remember. He can remember being at Oscar's funeral, the grief and regret an ocean he couldn't escape from, and he looked up and saw Dexter's face and it...

It had felt as though he had been thrown a lifejacket. He had still been in the endless water of his brother's death but floating now instead of drowning.

Just the sight of Dexter's face had done that.

Once, when he was but a child, he had called a friend of his _hermoso_... beautiful. His father had heard him and had left a bruise on his face because of it. Not for boys, his father had told him. _Sólo las muchachas son hermosas._

Only for girls.

Only for girls and yet Dex's face... _es hermoso. Es muy hermoso._

He doesn't believe that he invited Dexter to his house because of this reason. He cannot believe that. He has his wife and he has spent so many years loving her. He has put so much of his heart into loving her. It is a good life that he has with her and it's one that he wishes every man could have - one that he wants Dex to have, with Rita.

And if there are secret parts of his heart with other wishes, they don't matter.

It's not a lie to say that he loves Syl, simply because he does not think of her naked. Lust and love are not the same, something that he has told himself time and again.

He has tried to dismiss his feelings now as mere lust, as he has done in the past. Boys and men that part of him wanted to reach out and touch, but because he was stronger than his flesh, always stronger, he resisted. It was even easy, at times. Enough so that his heart scoffed at those who claimed that it was not a choice. It _was_ a choice, because he chose not to make it every day of his life.

It feels less and less like a choice with each day he spends near Dexter.

He cannot stop himself from reaching out to Dex, whether with a phone call or a look or his hands. He has found a person who shows his carefully-constructed life for the lie that it has always been.

In some ways, it had been a relief to trust Dexter too much - to give him the shirt with Freebo's blood on it, to entrust his future and his career to the man. He wants to trust even more than that. He wants to share every hidden part of himself, to expose it all to the light in Dexter's eyes. Dexter might not judge. Dexter might, too, hope that _hermosa amistad_ might change into _amor_, that a friendship can become love.

These are things that Miguel has fought all his life not to feel - he has known his duty. He has been a good son, a credit to his family. Better than his father, though he would only say that to himself or, these days, also to Dex. He has done his best to bring justice and yet justice constantly slips through his fingers and he watches as murderers, rapists, drug dealers, _las más asquerosas de criaturas_ all go free. There is little true justice in Miami.

Perhaps this is also something that he sensed in the beginning.

There is true justice in Dexter. He finds the monsters and he destroys them. It is not legal but... Miguel knows that it is not wrong.

_Dexter es un pecador. Asesinar es un pecado._

Miguel does not doubt this. But all men are sinners in the eyes of God.

Dexter is not evil. If he is anything, he is an avenging angel. The sins he commits in the name of justice are not as great as the sins of the ones he hunts.

And if what Dexter does is a lesser sin, what Miguel feels for Dexter must be smaller still. Perhaps his father was wrong and it is so small that it does not even count as a sin.

Since he has been a man, he has seen much more than his father ever did and some men... even men such as the ones he grew up with, they say that is not a sin at all. That it is love and thus beautiful.

Miguel isn't yet ready to go as far as that. He doesn't know that he ever will be, not when his own dreams leave him sweaty and lost in the mornings. Not when the thought of the look that would appear on Syl's face makes his blood run cold. _Maricón_, she would call him, and he would have nothing to say to counter it.

Part of him wants to believe that he can twist these two things together and say that they come from the same place - that the urge to wrap his hands around a knife to stop a killer from hurting anyone else and his desire to place that same hand on Dexter's skin... he wants them to be the same sin, small and forgivable.

In his heart, he knows that they are not.

Life is not that simple.


End file.
